Jasmine

small business

As you remember I had a craft show in July. I will still post more in-depth on that later. But shortly after the craft show I experienced only what I can describe as creativity burnout.
I had all but stopped working on all my unfinished projects, I and incredibly behind on custom orders ( very unprofessional 😦 ) and I have simply not wanted to do anything crafty. This is probably the first time that I’ve felt this way in a long time.
The problem is when you’re trying to start a creative business obviously this is a great impairment on your ability to run your business.
At this time I still have a lot of things going on in my life: I left my day job of six years for another more intensive and higher paying position, my daughter started fifth grade and is having a hard time adjusting to the curriculum, I am taking hybrid college classes for the fall semester ( just finishing up my current class this week on IT Systems and will be taking Algebra in two weeks, ugh 😦 ), and the lease is up at the end of the year so we will also be looking for a new home.
Despite it all I’ve feeling the creativity coming back. I picked up some beads and yarn, and I’ve been talking with two of my customers in regards to their orders and I have some ideas on some things to make for the holidays.
Just wanted to check in and let you know I’m still around. I’ll be checking back in soon with my updates from the craft show and my experience with that.

I have described my desk at work as an “organized chaos”. And that tends to spill into my home life as well. Its not like I like being disorganized.. I just didn’t know what to do about it. I was never really taught to be organized and so it just followed me along. Add on top my crochet, knitting, and beading/jewelry making supplies WELL before I opened my Etsy shop and well… I’ll leave it to your imagination.

In 2012 I decided I wanted to make my Etsy and Artfire Shops that I just casually used a real source of income and in 2013 I decided to get serious and register as a business. While 2013 wasn’t a booming year I was on the right track so I’m really pushing my self this year to be more Disciplined in my work.
I bought a planner last year to help getting my thoughts organized. A friend at work recommended an Arc Planner by Staples. She herself uses one but used the paper from Levenger as they are the same system but Arc is much more affordable for me. I love it so much that I have created a daily planner, one specifically for my full-time job, one for my college classes, and I’m in the process of creating one for my Etsy. I originally had the Etsy one intergrated with the daily planner but since I wanted to have my ledger and notes in one place I decided to make a separate notebook. If I write anything in my daily planner the beauty of this system is I can simply remove the page and place it in my Etsy notebook.

In conjunction with the planners, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to organize my supplies. This has been a long going process since like I said organizing is not my strong suit. Since this requires me to over analyze so I’m getting a little bit of anxiety. For example I have several containers for my supplies but a lot of the containers are a mix of half started projects and materials that I haven’t organized in the proper tray. Now I am sorting EACH item to go with its corresponding items. Doesn’t sound like a big deal until you think about an average crafter/hoarder’s stock… yeah…

Sometimes I have to take a break. So I’m working on a personal project, A Ripple Afghan ( I’ll post a picture of my progress next time), attempting to write another pattern for a casual/versatile hat.. this is where I’m at so far..

I’m loving this yarn. More on the hat next time 🙂

…..and working on items for my shop like these boot cuffs.

I will soon have a schedule for running shops to help organize and maximize my time which is really important considering that I have a full-time job, take college classes part-time, and have a 10-year-old daughter taking advanced classes at school as well as piano and soon swimming lessons.

Hopefully I can at least have the hat done to show you the finished product and have the pattern all written up.Well back to organizing..

I decided to start a new blog. I wasn’t too thrilled with the blogger set up and I like the look and accessibility of wordpress as well as receiving so many recommendations to use wordpress.

I will still have my old blog up however I will no longer be posting on it. The link to that blog is here.

To start things off, I’ll be posting regularly (between Friday and Saturday until I can find my rhythm) about things (mostly jewelry at the moment) that I find either in the store or online that inspires me to create my own interpretation. To make this even more fun, after each post I will add to my etsy and artfire shops the item up for sell. Most of my interpretations will be one of a kind and with the items I have on hand so more than likely this may be your only chance to get one of my interpretations!

I think this will also help with my creative block that I have been suffering from for the past month or so.

Be sure to look out for a new post at the end of this week by Saturday night!

**** UPDATE****

Due to life getting in the way I have yet to post on anything that I intended.

Instead I can show you to recent items that I have put up for sale in my Etsy and Artfire shops!